The Shortest Day ~

Let me be the first to announce that starting tomorrow, we start to regain daylight day by day. In fact, here in the Burg, sunset has already crept forward from its nadir of 4:48pm to 4:52pm as sunrise gyrates around a bit (but who cares about THAT?).
I've been sitting here in the study with an eye on the Wx Channel and doing a little on-line preflight planning for the A/Bus cross-country to Nashville, which will unfold beginning tomorrow afternoon. As is often the case, our temps are a good 7-8F warmer than DC and so once again, we will be spared the mixed glop they will contend with up there and get only rain. That should ease off and conditions get blustery with a headwind for the trip, but nothing more than a few snow flurries and very cold westbound overnight Sunday. The plan is to put myself in a position near Fishersville VA by tomorrow eve so as to link up with the RewCor and put the van on the dolly for the trip to Knoxville, where they'll take the van off and spend some time with Corelyn's dad and stepmom.
On Wednesday we headed up to DC in two cars and rendezvoused at a motel on the north end of Old Town Alexandria, where we established our BaseOps for the day and then headed downtown to see the new US Capitol Visitor Center. It proved to be reasonably impressive and we took The Tour of the Rotunda etc for the first time in a few decades.
From there we headed off for another great dinner at Legal Seafoods and then made our way over to the Kennedy Center for the musical version of "Legally Blond," for which M had treated us to box seats in a box that proved to be next to Lynn Cheney's. Serious-looking Secret Service guys were much in evidence outside the box. The show was very faithful to the movie and was really very good.
We got out about 10:30pm just in time to get a phone msg from Rew that they'd been delayed out of LA and had missed the connxn to DCA and thus would be landing about midnite in Baltimore. We met them there and had a nice visit as we made our way back to Alexandria, where we sent them off to a friend's with the van.
I flopped into bed about 2am, a bit tired since I'd been up 'til 3am the night before finishing "The Longest Road Home."
Thursday morn we were up and out after a nice free hot breakfast, getting back in time for my last Club Board meeting which consumed the rest of the afternoon. M came down and we had a nice dinner efore heading back to get her packed up for an 0500 wakeup call for her scheduled 0700 flight to Nashville.
But at 0300 we got a robocall from USAir telling my bleary brain that her flight to CLT had been canceled and she would be rescheduled for a noon flight. So we slept in and hit Costco on the way to the airport where we had pizza for brunch. Livin' large.
I kissed my sweetie goodbye and headed home to work away at the Christmas cards, stopping along the way to get a haircut and copies made of the C'mas letter. By the time I got around to actually starting the cards it was 5:30pm and I finished as the clock struck midnight. Whew. I did a celebratory post office run at 1am, even though I knew the cards wouldn't leave the PO bin until today at 5pm.
This morning Peter and Pete came over for a trio rehearsal for First Night minus Greg, who was down with a nasty flu. When that was done, I headed out to deliver a few neighborhood presents and then went to the Chickahominy storage yard to drain the water out of CHALLENGER's engine. I was a bit dismayed to see how the dirt and mildew have once again taken over.
I then went to the RV storage lot to make sure the A/Bus would answer the call and swapped the tires from side to side on the tow dolly to address an uneven wear pettern. I then came home, changed into my joggin's, and headed out for 45 minutes, ending up back at the lot to bring the A/Bus home.
Thereafter I made an amazing discovery, uncovering a basso profundo operatic voice to rival the finest operatic stars here in Williamsburg -- right under Greystone's roof, in fact. To wit, moi. This revelation came as I realized I'd never really tried singing in the shower here and, with my bride almost a thousand miles out of earshot and Handel's Messiah rattling around in my brain, decided to give it a go. The commodious, all-tile rectangular enclosure proved most dramatically gratifying when I let fly with a few choice arias. Furrow the brow, drop the jaw, and Unleash the Thunder.
You'll just have to imagine it. You couldn't put a mike in there.
Time to tank up on sleep. Happy Sunday ~